Development Intent
London borough · residential consent burden
Ranked on condition load and CIL. Basis: new-build residential schemes of 2+ homes where sampled.
Not enough parsed residential consents yet
Pre-commencement conditions · new residential schemes
Not enough comparable agreements yet
S106 · verified new residential schemes
£—
London avg £—
CIL / sqm
Starting in London. Expanding nationally.

Development intelligence, from site to delivery.

Planning decisions, policy, decision-makers, viability and owner intent — joined, so you know the odds before you commit.

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The intelligence, up close.

Planning behaves differently at every scale. We show you where and why.

Behind every decision sits a pattern — who decides, and how they’ve decided before. The same scheme can pass in one ward and fail in the next, depending on who picks it up.

Hover any ward to see how its decisions behave.

At parcel level.

Some owners are ready to engage. Most aren’t. We tell you which.

Off-market sites from landowners who’ve come to us directly — each one pre-assessed and scored on precedent, decision-makers and viability. Whether you’re pursuing or advising, the assessment’s done before you commit.

LowerHigher
Residential consent burden
i
LowerHigher
Ward refusal odds
i
Why A Parcel Surfaces
Engaged owner
Inferred intent
Pre-assessed site
Starting in London · expanding nationally

Development intelligence, from site to delivery.

Planning decisions, policy, decision-makers, viability and owner intent — joined, so you know the odds before you commit.

What this is

Planning is public.
Understanding it isn’t.

Development Intent turns planning records into something you can actually use. Every application, appeal, officer, inspector, committee and consultant, in one place: who approves, who refuses, who wins on appeal, and how long it takes.

We believe planning data should be free for everyone, so the Atlas is open to browse. The intelligence tools alongside it go further: finding patterns, appraising sites and surfacing opportunities.

Who it's for

One platform.
Multiple perspectives.

We were pursuing a site until the data showed the likely financial contributions would make it unviable. Normally we wouldn’t have discovered that until the decision notice arrived.
Development Director · London residential developer
The intent & intelligence gap

Find the risks before they become costs.

Before you commit time, money or design effort, you need to know:

01Is the owner willing to engage?
02Is consent realistic?
03Who can influence the decision?
04What will it cost to deliver?
05Will this actually make money?

Most teams find out too late — after the site has been chased, the scheme drawn, the application submitted and the money committed.

Development Intent brings those answers forward, so weak sites, weak arguments, appeal risk and hidden obligations can be priced, fixed or avoided earlier.

Hover the journey to see where risk becomes visible →
Development IntentTraditional methodClarity →
Read our thinking →
What it does

Four stages.
One intelligence layer.

Development doesn’t stop at finding a site. It moves through four stages: finding opportunities, building a planning case, understanding who shapes the decision, and delivering the outcome.

Planning isn’t as unpredictable as it looks. Decisions, appeals, conditions and interventions leave patterns. What looks like instinct, experience or politics often becomes clearer when viewed across thousands of outcomes.

One data spine · works at every stage

Different datasets become relevant at different stages of a project.

The seven layers
01
Site SourcingSource
02
Pre-SubmissionPrepare
03
AssessmentAssess
04
DeliveryDeliver
Owner intent
Planning history
Officer decisions
Committee patterns
Inspector reasoning
Conditions
S106 & viability
See how it works →
01
Where to work

Site Sourcing

Owners register intent to sell directly, so the map surfaces pre-scored off-market sites. Open one for its full history — intent, decisions, comparables, constraints and the officers who’ll decide it.

Draws on
Owner intent · Planning history
Atlas · Parcel view
Loading parcels…
96 Highgate Road, NW5 · Dartmouth Park CA
Subject site
Inferred intent nearby
Approved comparable
Refused comparable
Owner intent
● Direct
Approval · 5yr
68%
Designation
Dartmouth Pk CA
96 Highgate Road, NW5 1PB
Signal● Direct
SourceOwner contacted
Window3–6 months
Owner registered intent to dispose 7 days ago. Open to staged sale or JV. No marketing instructed.
14 apps · 68% approval · Refused 2019
1 approved · 1 refused · within 100m
Dartmouth Park CA · Article 4 · TPO
K. Patel · 72% approval · 8.4w
02
How to make the case

Pre-Submission

Search every comparable decision, ranked by scale against outcome — the line your scheme has to stay under. Open any case for the policies cited and why it was approved or refused.

Draws on
Planning history · Officer decisions
Atlas · Decision search
Search decisions, officers, policies…
8schemes found · NW5 · 5–7 units · CA5 approved3 refused
What the 8 share
Most-cited policy
DM1 — design quality
cited in all 8
Key constraint
HE2 — heritage / CA
7 of 8 schemes
Primary refusal
Overdevelopment
above ~7 units
The decisions · click to read why
DM1 — Design qualitySatisfied — contemporary rear
HE2 — Heritage / CALess than substantial harm
H2 — Housing delivery6 units appropriate
"The quantum of housing justifies the less than substantial harm to the conservation area setting."
5 more comparable schemes · sorted by relevance
03
Who you're up against

Assessment

See how often the committee overrules the officer, and who flips the vote. Open it to profile the officers, inspectors, councillors and objectors who decide your application.

Draws on
Officer decisions · Committee patterns · Inspector reasoning
Atlas · Assessment
Who decides this application
Officer approval
Borough avg · this typology
68%
Inspector overturn
Camden CA appeals
30%
Committee override
CA applications
22%
Neighbourhood
Engagement · local apps
86%
22%
Committee · 9 members
Lab 6 · LD 2 · Con 1 — 2 flip the officer's call.
The decision-makers · click to profile
Specialism: Major residential, CA conversions
Policies cited: DM1 · HE2
Note: Detailed pre-app recommended; responds well to heritage statements
Recent decisions
P2023/3841/FUL · 6-unit Highgate Rd · Approved
P2022/1204/FUL · 5-unit Fortess Rd · Approved
Specialism: Housing supply, design quality
Dominant ground: NPPF Para 130
Recent decisions
APP/X5210/W/23/3325441 · Camden housing · Allowed
APP/X5210/W/22/3309114 · NW5 design · Dismissed
Intervenes on: Design + density
Recent decisions
Mar 2024 · Voted against P2023/0891 (8-unit overdev)
Jan 2024 · Voted to refer to committee
Themes: Heritage, scale, materials
Recent decisions
Mar 2024 · Objected to P2023/0891 — materials
Feb 2024 · Supported P2023/3841 — sympathetic rear
04
How it gets built

Delivery

The condition load and the bill, benchmarked from comparable consented schemes. Open it for the full pre-commencement conditions and the S106 breakdown.

Draws on
Conditions · S106 & viability
Atlas · Predicted consent
Rear of 96 Highgate Road · 6 units
Condition load · 12 total
6
4
2
Pre-commencement
Pre-occupation
Ongoing
Obligations£390k–480k
£310k
£105k
£20k
Affordable
CIL
S278
Benchmarked from 12 comparable consents — the load and the bill, before you commit.
01Pre-commencementclick to expand
S106 + obligations
What the data tells you

Not more data.
Answers.

One decision tells you what happened. Thousands reveal why.

Which arguments succeed. Which concerns carry weight. How people influence outcomes. What consent really costs.

The Planning Atlas · free to explore

Every borough, ward, officer, inspector and committee — 1.4m decisions. No login.

Search the Planning Atlas →
How people use it

The same evidence. Different outcomes.

The questions change depending on where you sit in the process. The outcome is the same: better-informed decisions with fewer surprises.

Two sites looked similar on paper. One carried significantly higher delivery burden and consent risk. The decision became obvious once the pattern was visible.

What previously required hours of searching through planning records, appeal decisions and committee reports could be understood in minutes once the relationships were visible.

The assessment gave us a much clearer understanding of the site’s potential before we started speaking to developers.

Understanding approval risk is useful. Understanding delivery burden and likely obligations before capital is committed is even more important.

John Twisden
Developer — North London

Every figure is drawn from planning decisions, committee minutes and PINS appeal records. Public records remain traceable. Derived analysis is documented and explained.

Read the methodology →
Common questions

Publicly available planning records, committee minutes and PINS appeal decisions across all 33 London boroughs. Source data is traceable. Derived analysis — approval patterns, appeal odds, officer behaviour — is documented and explained.

Yes. The Atlas — boroughs, wards, officers, inspectors, track records — is free to browse with no login. Subscriber tools add appraisal, trends and full history.

Developers and land teams sourcing and appraising sites; consultants and agents building the planning case; and lenders or institutions weighing planning risk.

Development Intent surfaces two types of off-market opportunity:

Direct intent — opportunities submitted by owners actively exploring development, sale or partnership.

Inferred intent — opportunities identified through the combination of proprietary signals and datasets.

Every opportunity is screened against planning, policy, decision-making and viability criteria before being shared with members.

No. Development Intent does not predict outcomes. It reveals patterns in planning decisions, appeals, conditions and delivery records to help users make better-informed decisions.

Constraints show what exists. Development Intent focuses on what actually influences outcomes: decisions, appeals, conditions, officer behaviour, committee intervention and delivery burden.

No. The platform is designed to support professional judgement, not replace it. It makes research faster, deeper and easier to compare across thousands of decisions.

Policy is interpreted by people. Understanding how officers, committees, inspectors and consultees have responded to similar schemes helps provide context that policy documents alone cannot.

No. The platform is used by developers, consultants, landowners and institutions. The questions change, but the underlying evidence remains the same.

Most planning tools organise records. Development Intent focuses on the patterns behind them: what arguments succeed, which concerns carry weight, how people influence outcomes and what consent really costs.

Founding member rates

Understand the risks, costs and opportunities before time and money are committed.

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From £97/month · Founding member pricing